


Deep Blue, Vibrant Green

by profoundalpacakitten



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Color Blind Steve Rogers, Color Blindness, Colors, Embedded Images, Fluff, M/M, Pre-War, Synesthesia, Synesthetic Bucky Barnes, The Lightest Brush Of Angst, Tritanopia, just very soft, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:40:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28181058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/profoundalpacakitten/pseuds/profoundalpacakitten
Summary: So Bucky liked his voice, for reasons that remained beyond Steve’s understanding.He would get up from where he was sprawled on the couch and toss his pulp magazine onto the table before he turned the radio off and straddled a chair.“Talk, please,” he’d say.And Steve would talk as he drew.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 32
Kudos: 89





	Deep Blue, Vibrant Green

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been betaed by [Hark Bananas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hark_bananas) cause they are a golden nugget of sunshine, and read by a synesthetic person and someone whose family has a colour deficiency (but not the same as Steve's!)
> 
> See endnotes for further notes about the writing of this fic 🌝 The embedded images show the image for a "normal" eye on the left, and a tritanopic eye on the right.
> 
> Let's enjoy some softness in the end of year :)

### 1.

Steve had always known Bucky was different. Bucky was different because he stuck with Steve through thick and thin, because he was a great fella all around, because he was beautiful, in that movie-star boyish kind of way. Bucky was special, and he was special to Steve, not only because he had decided to be Steve’s friend, not only because other people noticed he was special too.

Bucky was just... Bucky.

But there was also something different about Bucky that Steve had never managed to put his finger on. An outlook on life, a way of perceiving things. He looked at life and his surroundings with ever-renewed intensity.

Ever since he had known Bucky, Bucky had suffered from migraines. For all that Steve got sick as a dog, every winter a war waged against his ailing body, Steve knew that he wasn’t the only one who sometimes fell victim to great pains. He could see how much Bucky’s migraines hit him hard.

As they got older, and after they moved in together, the problem persisted, and Steve developed ways to alleviate his friend’s suffering. Because, amidst all the terrible things in the world — hunger, poverty, sickness — it felt like the biggest injustice of all was seeing Bucky in pain.

Sometimes Bucky came back from his office job complaining of “having his head full” and of lights being piercing and sounds being bright. Steve paid the confused wording no mind and would bring him into their shared room and cover him with their softest blanket. He’d close the blinds and pad softly across the floor on bare feet, mindful of Bucky’s poor state.

For the first months of their cohabitation, Bucky had suffered in silence, back turned to the door of their shared bedroom, eyes closed and face drawn, and Steve had wrung his hands over what to do. He would ask Bucky if he wanted water, or something to eat. Another blanket, less light, windows closed? Bucky would stay quiet, perhaps unable to answer, until his breathing slowed down and he slipped into an agitated slumber.

One day, however, when Steve asked, murmured, really, if Bucky wanted a glass of water, Bucky finally answered.

He frowned, visibly in pain, and buried his head in the pillow. “No.”

So Steve stood up from where he was crouching beside the bed, prepared to go back to the living room, maybe to draw or make some broth, but Bucky’s hand stopped him, touching him on the arm. “Stay?”

Steve was quite puzzled because he knew that in times like this, Bucky needed to be alone, he needed calm and soft darkness. That’s what he’d supposed, from the silence. Steve kneeled beside the bed and looked into Bucky’s eyes, squinting doubtfully in the dark. “You sure?” Steve whispered.

Bucky nodded and grabbed at Steve’s hand. “Please talk?”

Steve licked his lips and looked to the side, unsure. Wouldn’t Bucky be better without all the noise? Steve’s voice was a bit hoarse, a bit husky and low, just above a baritone. It was a voice too big for his body, and sometimes, he didn’t know which he hated more, his body more for its weakness or his voice for the hint of strength he’d never have.

Bucky poked Steve’s cheek and Steve smiled, chuckled, looked back at Bucky’s smiling face, tempered only by a wince when his migraine flared.

“Okay, if you’re sure.” He’d do anything for Bucky, especially something so small. Neither of them had ever questioned or tried to put a name to the devotion they shared. They didn’t want to, or didn’t need to, maybe.

Like Bucky’s optimism, and Steve’s frailty, it was just… there. A fact of life.

And so Steve talked as softly as he could. He talked about his day, he talked about the drawing he was working on. Bucky’s frown slowly disappeared. Steve whispered about the grocery shopping they needed to do and the pie Mrs Dawson had baked them, which was waiting in the kitchen.

As Steve’s voice tapered off, Bucky opened his eyes with difficulty, drained but finally free of pain.

“You better?” Steve asked in a hushed tone.

“Yes.”

Steve grinned sunnily. “So my voice is a cure-all now?” If so, he was glad to have been able to provide respite for his friend.

Bucky nodded, his hair fanning and tangling on the pillow, leaving some leftover pomade onto the pillowcase, handsome now that he wasn’t aching. “It’s a great voice.”

Steve snorted. “Right.”

“Really.” Bucky yawned hugely and blinked his eyes a few times. ”It sounds so ample and blue,” he mumbled before burying his face in the pillow.

Steve huffed a breath, endeared.

In the end, he paid that strange declaration no mind. Bucky had been tired, nearly asleep.

Bucky was just special, and he was precious.

### 2.

After that one time, Steve took to talking to Bucky every time he saw an ounce of pain, an inkling of that tight discomfort on his face. Most times, it would happen after work, but other times they would go to dance halls — or Bucky would drag Steve to dance halls, more like — and Steve would nurse a drink at the bar while Bucky danced the night away, drunk on Lindy Hop moves and attention, all big smiles and rakish grins. Steve would look on, basking in the happiness of his friend, and smile at Bucky every time he’d turn to check that Steve was still there.

Then would come a song, or it maybe the noise of the bar, a voice raised too high, — a wrong note, a laugh and broken glass — who knew? Steve could only guess that the migraines stemmed from noises Bucky would make excuses and join Steve at the counter, smelling of sweat and smoke and perfume and pomade, still smiling, but with that pinch between his eyebrows.

So Steve would talk to him, they would joke and banter, Bucky would bump his shoulder against Steve’s and Steve would scoff at Bucky’s ridiculousness. Bucky would bend his head towards Steve, ask for his words in his good ear, and Steve would talk and talk and give him all the words he wanted.

Bucky would get better and go back to twirling nice girls around the dance floor.

So Bucky liked his voice, for reasons that remained beyond Steve’s understanding.

Bucky also started expressing the same preference when they listened to the radio. Sometimes, when they listened to the newscast, there would be a scratchy noise or a high-pitched whine that would set him off. He would get up from where he was sprawled on the couch and toss his pulp magazine onto the table before he turned the radio off and straddled a chair.

“Talk, please,” he’d say.

And Steve would talk as he drew.

It was one of those calm Sundays, sometime near the beginning of June, when Steve was recounting how the florist had been a pain when Steve had had to paint his shop front and sign on Friday. He’d known it was going to be a doozy from the start. Most of the flowers on the shopfront had been pink and red, which was fine. However, the sign was supposed to be a cornflower, with some nice vines around the name of the shop. He’d had to label his paints to differentiate the greens from the blues, and even then, the florist had had him repaint everything because the shades he’d used looked “strange.” To Steve, it had just looked like a giant mishmash of indistinct hues of blue and grey.

Bucky hummed in all the right places, commiserating about the inconsiderate florist until he clicked his tongue in the silence left when Steve turned his focus back to the details of Bucky’s portrait. “It’s so weird to me.”

“What is?” Steve bit his lip in concentration as he blocked in some shadows on his drawing, his pen scritching the paper in the quiet of the room.

“How you have such a hard time with blues and greens, but have a voice so rich with those two colors.”

Steve snorted and scritched some more, moving on to another bit of shading before he thought back on what Bucky had said and looked up, puzzled. “Rich with what? Colors… what?”

Bucky looked thoughtful with his chin resting on his forearms crossed over the back of the chair. ”Your voice. It’s… vibrant? And colourful, with lots of hues.” He shrugged. “You know.”

Steve looked back down at the sketch, as if it held the explanation for Bucky’s vague description. “Actually, I don’t?”

“Wait.” Bucky sat up from his slouch and looked at Steve, with not a small amount of surprise. “You never saw the lights your voice throws?”

Steve’s eyebrows rose to his hairline. He was so confused. “What?”

Bucky frowned. “What, what?” Bucky raised his hand, as if to catch something in the air. “The… but...” Then Steve saw the slow change in mental gears; he saw Bucky realising for the first time in his life that maybe, maybe he saw things differently. Maybe he was different, not in the “why does everyone manage everyday life okay and I don’t?” way but in the “maybe I’m the only one who has something to manage” way.

Silence fell and Steve put his pencil back in its nice case — a nice case Bucky had gifted him because he had money and Steve didn’t.

“Is it because of the… colour blindness? That you don’t see… the different… the.” Bucky stopped talking, stopped stammering through his words.

Steve shook his head. “Colour blindness is just me lacking the perception of some colours. Not… an inability to see colours in… a voice?” Was that what Bucky had implied?

Bucky bit his lip and slouched back in the chair.

“Bucky?” Bucky didn’t look up; he was hunched over himself. For a man so handsome, so confident, he sometimes had bouts of uncertainty at the strangest of times. “What do you see?”

Bucky shrugged. “Just… don’t worry about it.”

Steve huffed a frustrated sigh and went back to his drawing. He talked, and Bucky slowly unwound from his moment of distress and shook off his low spirits.

He’d talk to Steve when he was ready.

### 3.

Steve turned the light off. It was getting late, about ten in the evening, and Bucky had turned in early after dinner. His office job at the factory was important, and he needed to go in bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Steve put on his long johns and climbed into bed as silently as possible.

His eyes had just started adapting to the shadows of the night when a soft murmur reached his one good ear.

“It’s like when you sing a song in your head, there’s no sound, but you still hear it.” Steve blinked his eyes open and looked straight ahead at the darker shape of Bucky lying on his side in his own bed. “Then you talk, and [I see colours that aren’t there, but I see them](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obrBAysVef0&ab_channel=Seeker).”

Steve turned to face Bucky’s bed, unsure how to act or what to say. That sounded… incredible.

It sounded like a confession and an inconceivable secret, both.

“They make dots and blotches that appear and disappear, and I thought that’s what sounds were like. But.” There was a sigh. “Sounds aren’t like that, are they?”

Steve didn’t really have an answer for that. No, sounds weren’t. Then again, maybe sounds were just like that for Bucky. Steve licked his lips and whispered, because any stronger sound would shatter the moment, he thought, “Does this always happen?”

“It just happens. Most noises have a colour, different intensities. It happens a lot. Not always.” Bucky’s sheets rustled. “You sound blue, a deep dark blue that starts near your throat with brighter… shapes. Sky blue, vibrant green. They make dot-dot-dots to your left. Like thought bubbles in the paper comics.”

Bucky’s voice, deep and hushed, sounded so reverent. Steve didn’t know what to feel. Bucky and him, they shared everything, they had shared everything. And for all that they looked — and were — different, their greatest strength as friends was that they could always bridge the gap between them. With jokes, with care, with smiles. With something.

Steve struggled to find words that would help, words to share.

“Does it mean that if I saw my voice, it would look like blue clouds surrounding me?” Greens were just blues to him, after all.

There was a rustle on the other side of the room again, and then Steve’s bed dipped, to Steve's astonishment. He sat up halfway but ended up scooting over to make some space for Bucky to lie down beside him, a habit borne from years of childhood sleepovers and sharing the same spaces, existing in each other’s pockets.

They both lay down, pressed against each other, and Steve could have thought it awkward, but instead he felt like the narrower space between them was the perfect breadth for nightly confessions.

“Bucky?” Steve whispered.

“Every time…” Bucky hesitated, the sound of him licking his lips loud in the space bracketed by their bodies. “Every time you say my— It just. Every time, there's this vibrant green.” Bucky took in a big breath and released it, and in the same exhale whispered, “When you say…”

“Bucky?”

He felt more than he saw Bucky nodding, because Steve had closed his eyes.

This all felt so, so very close to something that neither of them spoke about. It was the truth left unsaid, the last space between the brackets of their bodies, that thing they had never addressed.

Steve looked back at Bucky and at his face, so hesitant and guarded. Steve had been told all his life by doctors and the world at large how bad his vision, his hearing, his whole body was. He knew what normal was, because it was something he couldn’t attain. And here Bucky was, living his whole life slightly out of step and just now realising it, because no one had ever told him so.

Slightly out of step.

Different.

Telling him all this had been pretty brave.

Steve smiled. “It’s incredible how you hear, what you see. You have a beautiful mind,” he said, and brought his hand to Bucky’s cheek, stroked his thumb under Bucky’s eye. He could be brave, too. “Don’t need working eyes to see it.”

“Steve.” Bucky’s voice trembled.

_Talk, please._

“Talk, please.”

And so Steve murmured Bucky’s name until he fell asleep.

### 4.

As all things get worse before they get better, Bucky got shy about his strange sense of hearing. He stopped asking Steve for his voice, stopped asking for silence or sounds, and refrained from touch. Steve wanted to force the issue, he liked talking for Bucky, wanted to alleviate the pain of a day making his head too full. He wanted to be there.

And after so deep a revelation and such closeness, it felt like a chasm.

Steve got frustrated, as he was wont to do, and Bucky retreated more. Their usual banter was strained, and their shared intimacy went out the window. As always when Bucky felt insecure or guilty or bad, he went out with dames and came home late.

Which absolutely didn’t help anything.

Steve was painting a beauty salon sign with a green background. The rest was all skin tones and oranges and a smidge of red. Those he’d labeled to be sure he wouldn’t get the soft skin shadow hue into the hair highlights. The hard thing was the background, green paint had flaked off but the steel underneath looked exactly the same as the colour he had to paint it. The hairdresser had gone back in an hour ago, so Steve had scraped most of the old green off, and was in the process of applying the whole coat all over the sign, just to be sure he wouldn’t miss a spot

He was painting and he thought…

He thought Bucky was a hard-headed ass and that he was the kind of stupid who would hobble himself in his haste to not be a bother.

Bucky was a fucking asshole because he wasn’t a fucking asshole. He had that brand of stupid that was a nice stupid, a stupid with good intentions.

Gosh darnit, but Steve was more and more convinced, as he painstakingly refreshed the red of the painted dame’s lips, that Bucky must be wallowing in pain and whatever dumbass guilt he could have found at the bottom of the barrel of stupid excuses. Must be something akin to, “Oh Steve must think my mind is too queer.”

Perhaps in all senses of the word.

Steve closed the green paint can — looked like steel grey to him, but whatever, that hairdresser wanted an ugly sign, and that was fine by Steve — and switched to the orange shade he was using for the hair.

Steve couldn’t be the only one, right? He couldn’t have imagined the fleeting glances, the charged moments, their hands touching. Their bodies in that bed, like brackets around the things they left unsaid.

That night had been charged with something other than confessions of noises that made fireworks.

Besides, it hadn’t been the first night, the first time they’d shared… a moment.

Steve sighed as he thought back to tears of mourning, to admissions of hopelessness in the face of illness. He thought back on that night that he and Bucky had talked about Steve’s poverty, Bucky’s comparative affluence.

But they never said, Steve had never said he was queer. The last elephant in the room, Steve thought.

“Should have fucking said something,” Steve muttered as he gave the finishing touches to the sign.

He took two steps away to admire his work. She looked okay, the design was clean-cut and properly painted.

The hairdresser dashed out of the salon when he called and immediately gushed over the sign. Then she nitpicked over the earring that he seemingly had forgotten to repaint, letting the steel plate show underneath.

Steve sighed, and painted.

### 5.

The plan was… not his best plan. Then again, his plans concerning Bucky were often of the very simple sort. They generally involved cornering him, and prying the truth out of him with hard stares and grumbling invectives.

First, he needed to keep Bucky inside.

“Steve.”

So he hid his shoes.

“Yes?” Steve continued flipping through the day’s newspaper, which he hadn’t gotten around to reading because he’d been needed at the grocery store early that morning for inventory.

Steve heard Bucky rummaging in the corner of the room. “Have you seen my dancing shoes?”

“Nuh-huh.” Those international pages weren’t looking good.

“Steve.” Bucky’s voice was right above him, but Steve kept reading. Or fake-reading more like. The trick was in having his eyes slide down the page and not just side-to-side. “Steve, do you know where my shoes are?”

“Huh. Haven’t the faintest, Buck.”

The newspaper got ripped from his hands, and Steve now had the pleasure of looking at a very displeased Bucky. “You can’t lie for shit nor money, Steve, where are my shoes?”

“Why?” Steve smiled widely, shit-eating and taunting. “Going somewhere?”

Bucky seethed and made a choking gesture with his two hands. “Steve! Why are you being such a friggin’ jerk!”

Steve caught the newspaper, lying crumpled on the ground and made a show of smoothing out the creases. “Must be ‘cause you were a jerk first.”

Bucky looked like he was chewing on his next retort, and it was going to be a salty one. But Steve had another chess move. He creased the newspaper again. Smoothed it out.

Bucky looked around and clenched his jaw.

Crumple slightly, recrease, fold the paper and search for the international pages.

“Steve.”

Until Bucky’s revelation, Steve had never really understood why Bucky had those quirks about crinkling and crumpling paper, and preferred pulp novels to the news.

“Steve, stop it.”

Must be the colours. Steve stared up at Bucky over the pages. Bucky looked… tired, under the frustration. He looked uneasy and tired, and now that Steve had him where he needed him to be, it was his job to make sure Bucky would stop fleeing the situation and take a little better care of himself.

“Come on, Bucky, let’s eat.” Steve didn’t miss Bucky’s eyes quickly looking at his throat and then to the side.

This was, after all, maybe the first time in days that Steve had said his name.

Dinner was simple cutlets and peas, both given to him by the grocer and butcher because they were on the point of spoiling. They ate in silence, and Steve tried to enact some more of his plan, which was keeping his cool, being aloof so that Bucky would feel the effects of getting the cold shoulder. As for Steve, he focused on Bucky, checking for signs of discomfort, which helped him not look too much at his plate, because peas and pork cutlets just looked like pinkish mush and it wasn’t really appetising.

Steve swore up and down all day that he wouldn’t be so skinny if food looked more appetising, really.

By the time they got ready for bed, Bucky had gone from slightly angry and frustrated to contrite. So Steve’s plan was panning out okay. Maybe by tomorrow, he’d even slide into chastised.

Steve’s good night was cold, and Bucky’s was only a meek murmur in the night.

He had a plan, but his heart broke a little all the same.

### 6.

Steve woke up first on Saturday, which he could have safely bet on, since Bucky had been out all night every night that week.

Since he was the first one up, Steve cooked a simple breakfast, eggs and some toast with jam, thinking this would entice Bucky out of bed and put him in a good mood. The cold shoulder treatment didn’t have to last any longer than necessary.

The tactic worked, as Bucky soon emerged, looking sleepy and rumpled even after having dressed for the day. He yawned and stretched, and then he looked at Steve with the exact chastised look that Steve had expected.

“Come on, Bucky, sit down, let’s eat before we get into it.”

Because Steve really had no desire to have a serious discussion on an empty stomach.

Bucky tucked in like a ravenous man. He’d been overexerting himself by being out too late, and after sleep came hunger.

Steve had thought everything through. He needed to create some sense of familiarity, here, so that Bucky would open up again. If this all felt like a complicated plan to lure out a skittish animal, it perhaps was because… he actually was trying to lure out a skittish, soft animal; an insecure Bucky was much more similar to a fluffy hare than one would think.

Steve put the dishes in the sink to soak for later and went to retrieve his pencils.

When he got back to the living room, Bucky was standing beside the table, unsure and fidgeting with the edge of his sleeve.

“You wanna listen to me?”

Bucky dropped down onto the chair he’d occupied during breakfast. “Yes, please.”

Steve would have fallen onto the floor in relief if he hadn’t been sitting already. If Bucky wanted his voice again, then everything would be fine again. Who cared for the yearning maw of Steve’s love for Bucky? He just wanted his proximity, his presence. He just needed Bucky, in whatever shape or form he’d get him.

A smile on his lips, Steve recounted the painting of the hair salon sign. As he began blocking the main parts of his drawing, which he had decided would be a captain on a ship — before Bucky had gone into a spiral of dumbassery, he’d been engrossed day and night in a series of books with dashing pirates — Steve went on to describe the conundrum of the green paint and the grey-blue steel behind it.

He was in the middle of a sentence — really, he couldn’t have said what he was talking about, because when he gave his voice for Bucky, he just talked, said whatever ran through his mind — when Bucky interrupted him excitedly with a “Steve!” and a hand on the corner of Steve’s drawing. “I know!”

“What?” Steve gaped and watched as Bucky stood up and quickly went to the kitchen. He dropped his pencil on the paper and turned around to check what the hell Bucky was doing, sending a twinge of pain up his spine. “Buck?”

“I’m gonna make you see!” Bucky put a fork and three glasses on the table, two filled with water, and then hastily walked to their bedroom. Steve didn’t even have time to get up when Bucky was coming back, bringing one of his pulp novels, an old fan his mother had given him, and some more drawing paper and the nice pastels.

“Bucky, the pastels-”

“I’ll buy you more.” He dumped his hoard on the table and started making piles and setting some of his various and sundry items aside. “You don’t see colours right, and I see them all the time, it’s not right, Steve.”

Steve chuckled, “Bucky, what are you talking about?” he asked, as Bucky opened and closed the fan, made a face, set it aside, and then tapped several of the pastels on the table, then on the empty glass, discarding all but one of the lengthier sticks and keeping the shorter ones. Then he took two of Steve’s charcoal sticks and snapped them.

“Bucky!” Steve scrambled to try and rescue his charcoals.

“Wait!” Bucky made a wall with his arms, as if they were still in middle school and he wanted to keep Steve from cheating and looking at his paper. “Don’t! I need to show you!”

Steve huffed and sat back in his chair. He was… annoyed. But also endeared, because Bucky was back to being his lively self, and Steve would give up the world to see that childish glee on his face.

Bucky clinked the fork several times in several places, on the glasses. His eyes were zipping around, trying to follow some invisible things only he could see. “Problem with those colours is they follow my gaze, you know? That’s the damnedest thing…” he muttered.

After a while, he finally sat back and turned to Steve. “Okay. You listening?” Steve made a show of huffing and puffing but he still nodded and acquiesced. “No, you need to listen _close_ , give me your good ear,” Bucky said.

Steve rolled his eyes heavenward. “Christ, Bucky… okay, okay.” Since he didn’t look like he would relent, Steve picked up his chair and went around the table so his left ear would be to Bucky.

“Good, perfect. Now listen close.”

Bucky picked up the long pastel and sent it rolling across the table, then he clinked the tines of the fork on the half-empty glass of water, way up on the lip, and then immediately he clinked it again on the full glass of water. The strange combination of the lower, repetitive sound of the pastel and high, nigh-imperceptible noise of the glasses was… unique.

“This, this is steel. Grey. Blue. It’s the colours of steel, at least. Very dull. I can see it sometimes on the harbour, too, the ships.” Bucky rambled as he assembled his next experiment.

Steve gaped, and looked at Bucky. This was…

But Bucky wasn’t finished, and he was entirely focused on a new task. He made a little pyramid of the small pastels and toppled it several times, until he seemed satisfied for some reason Steve couldn’t fathom. He proceeded to build the pyramid up again, line the charcoals and…

With the fork, he crushed the charcoals slowly, grinding them, and tilted the handle of the fork so that it ended up touching the pile of pastels too. The sound was much more complex this time, the dull grinding like a tickle in Steve’s ear in a strangely agreeable way, and the tumbling pastels added some sort of a wooden plink to this improvised… concert.

Steve had been observing the tumbling art supplies and thus missed at first the intense look on Bucky’s face.

“Bucky…”

“This is grass green.”

Grass…

They both stayed frozen, watching each other, Bucky, still riding the wave of his enthusiasm, but getting more uncertain by the minute, and Steve, awed, dumbfounded, confused, stunned…

Grass had always seemed… dull. Flat. Grey. Blank like the sky and underwhelming.

“I’m…” Bucky broke and looked down, then started fumbling and tidying nervously. “I’m sorry about the charcoals, I-”

Fuck leaving stuff unsaid. “Shut up, just—” Bucky looked up, startled and now anxious. “—just shut up, Bucky.” And Steve launched himself into Bucky’s lap and kissed him square on the mouth.

“St—” Steve kissed him again, this time taking a second more to delight in the softness of Bucky’s lips before Bucky pushed his hands against Steve’s torso.

Steve would have thought Bucky wanted him off his legs, off his lips, if Bucky’s hands hadn’t been gripping his shirt too, holding Steve just far enough to look him in the eyes. Bucky’s eyes were so wide. So grey.

“Steve?” Bucky whispered, his gaze searching and hopeful.

“You gave me your colours,” Steve said, as if it explained everything.

And in a way, it did.

“You make the pain go away, all the time,” Bucky replied, and leant forward, bridging the gap between them.

This time, it was Bucky who kissed him, delicately, reverently, slowly. A tentative touch of the lips, adding more intent as they grew more entwined, Bucky’s hands sliding to Steve’s back, Steve’s arms thrown over Bucky’s shoulders.

Their kisses grew less and less urgent, because this was like the last piece that settled between them, the last river to be bridged.

“Steve…” Bucky’s breath felt hot against the skin of his neck, next to his right ear. “Steve, I love you.”

Steve took Bucky’s face between his hands and smiled, his thumb stroking his cheek. “I love you too, Bucky.”

Bucky’s eyes slid from Steve to the side. “Jesus.” And then he smiled brightly. “Steve…”

_Talk, please._

“Talk, please.”

And Steve talked, and said he loved Bucky, a hundred or a thousand times, he made colours in Bucky’s head, and put a look of wonder on Bucky’s face.

He talked and talked and they kissed and kissed, in the pink and golden-orange Saturday morning.

**Author's Note:**

> Steve has [tritanopia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness) which is a type of colour blindness that can affect men and women alike, but is exceedingl rare (yes, Steve is extra like that). That means that Steve would see mostly in shades of blue and pinkish reds: green and yellow are absent because of his lack of green cones.
> 
> As for Bucky, he has what is classically called [chromesthesia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromesthesia), a kind of [synesthesia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia) that associates sounds and colours.
> 
> I myself, am neither colour blind, nor synesthetic, (only subject to the usual auditory hallucinations that can go with ADHD hehe). I read a lot on experiences of synesthetic people, reading forum posts, articles and scientific papers. Of course, for the sake of the _uwus_ , and the fact that no synesthetic experience is exactly the same one person to another... I did make my own version of the synesthetic experience.
> 
> All images were simulated using a colour blindness simulator, that you can find here: [CoBliS](https://www.color-blindness.com/coblis-color-blindness-simulator/).


End file.
